This invention relates to a hand held device for cutting loops of pile yarn manually to form cut pile.
In the manufacture of cut pile carpets and rugs, occasionally one or more knives may break in the tufting machine and one or more rows of loops will then extend from the backing rather than the tufts of cut pile. Presently these loops are generally manually cut by a hand held pair of scissors as the carpet leaves the tufting machine. In wool pile carpet fabrics there may be a tool which has a plurality of fingers which grab the loops and pull them to either rip the loop or pull it from the backing. In either of these cases the process is inconvenient and not totally satisfactory. For example, if more than one row of loops is to be cut then a person standing downstream of the tufting machine must rapidly cut the loops in such rows, and in many cases, especially after a period of time when fatigue or boredom sets in, many of the loops may be missed. If the carpet or rug is to be tip sheared subsequently a slightly different look would appear where the loops have to be cut by the tip shearing apparatus and the carpet may, in certain circumstances, be classified as defective.
There have been other methods of cutting pile loops in the prior art, as for example, that shown in Scott, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,543,400 and Houghton, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,028,802, but the former could not function to cut loops while the carpet in being produced and the latter may cut but a single loop at a time. If more than one tufting machine knife should break, then Houghton, et al., cannot function to correct the stitches produced in more than one row.
Consequently, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a hand held cutting tool for manually cutting pile loops projecting from a carpet or rug, the tool having a plurality of cutting members.
It is further object of the present invention to provide a hand held cutting tool for manually cutting loops of tufted pile which have failed to be cut extending from the face of cut pile fabric, the tool having a plurality of cutting members each having two cutting edges mounted so as to be readily reversed to prevent the second set of cutting edges when the first set of cutting edges have become worn.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a hand held cutting tool for manually cutting loops of tufted pile, the tool including a handle connected to a blade carrying housing in which a blade holder is positioned, the blade holder having a plurality of slots for receiving a like number of blades each of which has two cutting edges, and the blade holder being positioned within the housing in one of two selected positions to present the first or the second cutting edges selectively.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a hand held loop cutting tool for cutting tufted loops of yarn projecting from a carpet, the tool having a handle portion connected to a blade carrying housing position, a blade holder having a plurality of slots for receiving a like number of blades is positioned within the housing. Each blade has two cutting edges which may be secured in the holder with one of the edges projecting from the bottom of the housing. When the first edges of the blades are spent, the blades may be reversed within the housing merely by reversing the position of the holder to present the second set of edges. The blades themselves do not have to be removed from the holder until both cutting sets of cutting edges have been spent. In use, one merely needs to insert one of the first edges into each projecting loop where there are more than one projecting loop in a line of stitching and pull the loop to cut the same. When the cutting edges of the first set of edges is spent, the blade holder is removed from the housing and reversed in position to present the second set of cutting edges projecting from the bottom of the housing.